About

Explaining this great project in a few words is really difficult. What we are building is the biggest Campus, Library, Theatre, Museum and Archive of music written both in civilian and military concentration Camps from 1933 to 1953.

The Citadel of concentrationary music is more then a project, it's a mission.

Since 1988 the Italian pianist and researcher Francesco Lotoro traveled around the world searching for survivors and relatives of the victims that perished in the Camps 1933 to 1953.

Francesco Lotoro recovered more than 8,000 scores, 12,000 items, hundreds of hours of interviews and thousands of books and papers.

Giving a home to this huge Mankind heritage, allowing people to access to it and scholars from everywhere to know this missing music from the XXth century, resounding these wonderful music in a theater: now, the time has come!

Thousands of musicians wrote music in captivity, in despite of inhumane conditions; we will not allow both to nazifascism and stalinism as a postumous victory leaving this music unknown and not performed .

To carry on this project, we need your help.

The project has a cost of €13,000,000,- (thirteenmillions euro); about € 3,000,000,- (threemillions euro) are missing, but we ask you to support only a small part of this big project: the "Nuovi cantieri" Theater that costs about € 400,000,- (fourhundredthousand euro).

§I. The Institute of Concentrationary Music Literature Foundation (ILMC) was founded in 2014, its registered office is in Barletta, via V. Marone 38/C and it is recorded at the Legal Entities Register of Prefecture of Barletta–Andria–Trani; ILMC Foundation is a legal entity envolved to research, study, cataloging, recording, publication and promotion of Concentrationary Music that is the music written and created both in civil and military captivity or under extreme conditions of deprivation of fundamental human rights from 1933 to 1953. The ILMC Foundation has the largest archive in the world regarding concentrationary music, thanks to the work of its founder, Francesco Lotoro. ILMC Foundation submitted to the City government of Barletta the project The Citadel of Concentrationary Music after public notice issued on 2016, 29th of July titled Invitation to show Action Proposals to be implemented under the Urban Renewal and Safety Program of the Suburbs of Barletta (a national competition of Council of Ministers), on 2016, 26th of August the City Council gave to this project a favorable opinion to ministerial support of € 5,000,000 (five million euros); the ministerial decree published in the Official Gazette of the Italian Republic on 2017, 5th of January definitively approved the related project and funding.
The Apulia Region has promised to support the project with another funding of nearly € 5,000,000 (five million euros); but the total cost of the project is about € 13,000,000 (thirteen million euro), so we also need your help to complete it. The project was designed by architect Nicolangelo Dibitonto.
The Citadel of Concentrationary Music will be built on a total space of approx. 9,000 square meters on the area of the former Distillery of Barletta, close to the railway station from the side of the terminal of Ferrovie Nord–Barese which is connected to Bari–Palese airport.
The Citadel of Concentrationary Music is the fulfillment of the research that the pianist and researcher Francesco Lotoro made over the past 30 years, today his documentary and philological work is protected by ILMC Foundation.
The Citadel will be completed in 2020, it will consist of five divisions:

1. Museum of Regenerated Art

Exhibition of musical manuscripts written both in civil and military captivity

Exhibition of musical instruments recovered from the concentration Camps

The Museum of Regenerated Art will cover an area of approx. 1,200 square meters and will offer space to the heritage of musicbooks, documents as so as photos, instruments, video & audio items.
The Nazism, as a political movement turned to an ideology comprehensive of some cultural and artistic aspects of German society, conceived the expression Entartete Musik (Degenerate Music) similarly to Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art); modernist musical currents, which were innovative of music language (dodecaphony, jazz, musical) or revolutionary in regard of the symphonic and operatic tradition were branded as Entartete Musik.
Today, less than one century from the monstrous conception of the Degenerate Art, we overthrow this pseudo–artistic vision gained from Reich by means of a Museum of Regenerated Art.
The Museum will promote the knowledge of music written in captivity, will help people to rediscover a whole generation of composers, will organize exhibitions and conferences in collaboration with cultural institutions, schools, universities; instruments used in captivity as so as photo items will be exhibited, some biographical notes, works list concerning each musician will be reported.
In the Museum a huge Phonographic Archive accessible via headphone will be located; some spaces with maxi–screens and seating will be dedicated to the continuous vision of video items for schools and organized groups.

The Campus of Music Sciences will cover an area of approx. 1,200 square meters, it will offer spaces for research, study and updating directed both to concentrationary and Jewish music.
In the Campus, both activities of the Master of Concentrationary Music Literature and the National Jewish Music Hub will take place; in the Aula Magna a pipe organ will be built.
As a classic landmark of great libraries and museums, a Park and a kasher Bistrò under rabbinical surveillance with 72 seats will be established.

The Nuovi Cantieri Theatre will cover an area of approx. 310 square meters and it will be equipped with 220 seats on two levels, orchestra pit and stage mt. 8x7 located in a scenic tower (former distillation tower) high mt. 17; the Theatre will be mainly dedicated to production, performance and staging of the musical repertoire created in civil and military captivity from 1933 to 1953.
Classical, jazz, ethnic, cabaret and contemporary music productions will be hosted, too.
The Theatre will be equipped with audio–video recording area and sheet for film screenings; the outdoor theatre Nuovi Cantieri Open in an covered area of approx. 300 square meters and 150 seats will be established, to be used for conferences and recitals.
Performing and promoting concentrationary music is one of the most important goals of civilization.
This will be the mission of the Theatre; in view to this, Musica Rigenerata Concentrationary Music Festival and the Youth theatre after the Memory of Arts Long life to life! will be organized.

Francesco Lotoro during an interview, analyzing the "violin of Auschwitz"

5. International Bookshop of the 20th century

Bookshop

Educational workshop & Lounge for book presentations

The International Bookshop of the 20th century will cover an area of approx. 520 square meters corresponding to the settling basins of the former Distillery with a large editorial, recording and publications offer on concentrationary music as so as on the music production of 20th century, First and Second World War, Cold War, State of Israel, etc., until the contemporary.
In the Bookshop an educational workshop for schools and organized groups will be located; the Bookshop will also be useful to conferences and book presentations.

A view of the International Bookshop of the 20th century

Francesco Lotoro analyzyng scores in Theresienstadt

§II. Francesco Lotoro. Born in Barletta in 1964, piano graduated at the Conservatorium of Music N. Piccinni in Bari, piano specialization at the Academy of Music Franz Liszt in Budapest with Kornél Zempléni and László Almásy, he also studied with Viktor Merzhanov and Aldo Ciccolini. He reconstructed music and text of Weihnachtsoratorium for Soli, mixed choir and piano by Friedrich Nietzsche. Involved in the piano literature produced during the dramatic events of the 20th century, in 1998 he performed the complete piano works written after the occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968 that ended the Prague Spring. He recovered 8,000 musical works and 12,000 documents of concentrationary music, which is widely considered the highest authority. He is the author of the Encyclopedia in 24 CD–volumes KZ Musik. He wrote Cantata Ebraica for singer and orchestra, Requiem Barletta 12.IX.1943 for soloists, organ, piano and orchestra, the opera Misha e I Lupi and 12 Studi su un tema di Paganini for piano; he arranged Musikalisches Opfer, Deutsche Messe and 14 Canons by J.S. Bach for 2 pianos. In 2011 the writer Thomas Saintourens published the book Le Maestro about his life and his research; in 2016 the documentary The Maestro directed by Franco–Argentine director Alexandre Valenti – a French–Italian production inspired by the homonymous book of Saintourens – was made. He teaches Piano at the Conservatorium of Music U. Giordano in Foggia.

These are some examples of music written in prison camps:

Johnny&Jones - Floep zei de stamper

Rudolf Karel - Nonet 1st mouvt

Jozef Kropinski - Zal Tango

Erwin Schuloff - Sinfonia n.8 1st mouvt

Edmund Lilly - Moon above the Gobi

For those who want to learn more:

§III. Concentrationary music is the music created in imprisonment, transit, forced labor, concentration and extermination Camps, jails, ships and logistics turned in imprisonment sites, POW Camps, Stalag, Oflag and Gulag open both by Third Reich, Italy, Japan, Italian Social Republic, Vichy regime and other Axis countries as so as Great Britain, France, Soviet Union and other Allies countries in Europe, colonial Africa, Asia, U.R.S.S., U.S.A., Latin America and Oceania from 1933 (opening of KZ Dachau) to 1953 (death of Josif Stalin and amnesty of prisoners in the Gulag) by discriminated, persecuted, imprisoned, deported, killed or survived musicians of any professional, artistic, social, religious, national background: Jews, Christians, Sinti and Roma and other Romanès people, Euskaldunak or basque people, Sufi, Bahá’í, quakers, J.’s Witnesses, communists, disabled, homosexuals, civilian and military prisoners. Briefly, concentrationary music means musical production created in captivity or under extreme conditions of deprivation of fundamental human rights; it is one of the most important legacies of the universal History related to the phenomenology of the deportations. The rise of Nazism and the de–Stalinization of Soviet Union are the poles of a huge historical and geopolitical plan, artistic creativity in captivity is a human common factor among them; there is a deep interconnection between historical and social phenomenology of Nazi–fascism and Stalinism, it is based on deportation, exile, internment and psycho–physical annihilation of people. The persecution, imprisonment, deportation and murder of musicians from 1933 to 1953 because of pseudo–racial and political reasons or related to the war development is an epochal event for Western civilization; many composers, conductors, theatre artists disappeared around 20 years. In the most tragic moment of History, the Mankind began the most advanced mechanisms of conservation unleashing a burst of creativity, as a Testament that the concentrationary world wrote in the Camps scoring an apical point of the genius. It has been not possible to save the life of many deported musicians but we saved their music, it is as to save their lives in the universal, metahistorical and metaphysical meaning. This music does not need of historical vehicles like war, deportation, Shoah, Porrajmos, the term concentrationary is useful only for research purposes; the composer created regardless of the surrounding environment, carried out with a mental and technical clarity an intellectual and manual work, hardship or loss of freedom or physical discomfort did not represent an obstacle but a stimulus. Today, we give back life and dignity to thousands of musicians and their music written on notebooks, toilet paper, jute bags, paper for foods or handed down by heart while they were still on the trains; to revive this music is not a free choice but a required mission. The research on concentrationary music want to transform an immense catastrophe to the greatest possibility we have today in view to improve art, music, creative thought and deepest, insightful emotions of the intellect. Europe was born on the ashes of concentration camps and confinement places; it was born on 1938, 29th of May in Wien on the platform of trains to Dachau where Herbert Zipper tuned the song An die Freude from L.v. Beethoven’s 9th Symphony followed by the other deportees (today An die Freude is the official hymn of the European Union); on 1943 in Sachsenhausen where Hymns were translated in several languages so that all the prisoners could sing; on 1944 at the confinement of Ventotene where Franco Antonicelli and Manlio Rossi–Doria who wrote some anti–fascist Songs. In despite of an enormous suffering loaded on it, music created in captivity solidifies feelings of belonging to unwavering causes; it comes from cosmopolitan genius and creativity, as an artistic Manifest for a future era. Recovering this music is as to rebuild schools and hospitals destroyed by the war, to restore educational plans –irremediably compromised or destroyed because of war events and deportations – in art, literature and music. As the great cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, who on 1989, 11th of November played J.S. Bach’ Suites under the Berlin Wall that collapsed after 60 years, so the deported musician destroyes the walls of the Camp by singing, playing and writing music. The musician does not put the Lager or the Gulag into music neither translate the deportation in art; rather, he destroys the Concentration camp into an ideologica sense through music. Turning a negative place into a positive mind and heart is an evolved form of spiritual electromagnetism; from the numerical and ethical point of view, concentrationary music is incalculable, so 8,000 recovered scores could be in the future as a small part of what has been created during the 20 years between the rise of Nazism to the death of Stalin. Music historiography must be updated in the light of the music written in captivity from the opening of the first Lager (1933) to the closure of the last Gulag (1953). The music acted as an individual and collective strategy of resistance by deportees, internees, POWs, turning expectation in survival; some misunderstandings and distrust among various social groups in the Camps (due to problems of language or uses) were overcome thanks to the music. In the motionless time of deportation, the Camp became a dream and art factory. Musical notes, signs and structures fixed on sheets are as the emerged part of the ship or the top of an iceberg; in the Camp the writing is sculpted, the musical mark is literally carved on the sheet and contains the physical effort exacerbated by the environmental context, is carved on the paper to remain as a testament of the heart. Concentrationary music is a unique and unmistakable message, a relay – hélas – fall during the transition from the phenomenology of the Camps to the 20th Century Music History. In Theresienstadt some great musicians forged a musical thought which made it as a crossroads of contemporary music; in the Studio für Neue Musik in Theresienstadt advanced musical languages were experimented, the Study for string orchestra by Pavel Haas amplifies the virtuosity of the Concerto for Orchestra by Béla Bartók, the Madrigals by Gideon Klein foreshadowed a musical Renaissance of which no trace remained after 1945. As a genius who scanned the musical future, Viktor Ullmann was an endless horizons musician; he would have the ability to influence the contemporary musical language. Six orchestras were established in the complex of Camps in Auschwitz, among them a Polish orchestra of Auschwitz I Stammlager, the Romanès orchestra of the Zigeunerlager, a jazz ensemble, a male orchestra of Birkenau conducted by Szimon Laks and a female one conducted by Alma Rosé. In the prison of San Vittore Milan the Sufi Gabriele Mandel wrote Canto for tenor and piano while in the prison of Prague–Pankrác Rudolf Karel laid down clandestinely the scores of Nonet and the opera Tři Zlate Vlasy Děda Vševěda writing with charcoal on toilet paper. The music was tragically used by the Auschwitz II Birkenau female orchestra to suffocate the screams of the victims during the gassing as so as was used by the Oflag IVC Colditz orchestra to cover (especially during the forte of the orchestra) the evasion maneuvers of the companions. To be mentioned German and Sorbian composers interned in Allied POW Camps (among them Bertold Hummel, Hans Martin, Michael Nauke) as so as Soviet composers imprisoned in the Gulag (among them Gaziz Almukhamedov, Jefim Golishev, Mieczyslaw Weinberg, Alexander Veprik, Mikhail Nosyrev, Boris Sobinov, Aleksandr Mosolov, Alexei Machavariani, Leibu Levin). Music does not discriminate but involves; you must consider the music created in captivity from 1933 to 1953 as a unique language wherever it has been conceived. There is an energy that drives musicians to make music in front of the abyss of death like the Titanic musicians who played until just before the transatlantic sink; so, while Europe sank, musicians composed and played because it was their job to safeguard civilization. As a cathedral in the eyes of an architect reveals secrets and codes invisible to most people, so a score written in captivity reveals some historical truths otherwise difficult to convey through diaries or letters; it urges to return this musical heritage to human kind so that it can regain its place in the History of Music. To bring alive music created in captivity is not an archaeological act; this music has to come back to us as current instead a residual of war. We must reconstruct artistic thought (and visions in it) as it was before the War, opening the gates of this new Library of Alexandria; it is necessary to convey the aura of the inexhaustible mines of music conceived in captivity in the arteries of the musical language of the 20th century, filling the historical gap between Camps' logistical and humanitarian isolation. In Birkenau the Roma Songs echoed until late night, it has been possible because SS stationed in the nearby barracks enjoyed their music; it’s the best prophetic image of the miracle done by concentrationary music, so to say falling asleep listening to this music without fear of dying for somebody's whim or not waking up at all. Music created in the Camps, unlike a photo or a movie, cannot be altered; it’s among the few no human witnesses to be considered fully trusted.

Risks and challenges

A precarious question related to the Cittadella project concerns the state of preservation of several music autographs and documents.
Without some logistic structures and dedicated spaces for preservation and safekeeping of autograph items (provided spaces to the 2nd floor of the Book & Media Library of the Citadel), there’s a seriours danger of further deterioration of items.
A second question concerns cataloging and archiving of items as well as development of microfilms and transfer of phonographic items on tapes, vinyl, audiocassette and videotapes to modern technological supports; these are very expensive processes, therefore we delayed them after the Citadel building.
A last question concerns the timetable of the construction of the Citadel; according to the final design of it as so as submitted to the Italian Council of Ministers, the Citadel will be delivered and be operative from 2020. To do this, starting of the works for the Citadel into 2017 December is needed. Preliminary safety works are ongoing, this could delay the delivery of the Citadel of about one year. Adeguate financing of the whole project would allow a minimum of 3 building sites to be opened at the same time, so the Citadel could be completed in time.

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Pledge €5,000 or more
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Concert

Your Name (and/or the name of a your relative in Memory of Him/Her) will be graven on the Donor Wall in the centre of the Citadel.
A recital (solo or chamber or symphonic one) in our theatre will be dedicated to the donor.
A seat in the Aula Magna of the Campus or in the Nuovi Cantieri Theatre will be dedicated to the donor.